


it's you. it's you all over and i can't help but see you.

by katiemariie



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-13
Updated: 2010-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiemariie/pseuds/katiemariie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Radar can't help but hear things from Trapper, Hawkeye, and Frank. Contains cutting and attempted suicide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's you. it's you all over and i can't help but see you.

There are times when he tries to explain the things he can do (the things he can know) in words. He's never been much good with words. The closest he's gotten is there are things people say without saying anything. It's just so much who they are that they can't help saying it. Or projecting it. And the bigger or worse that thing is the louder they say it. He knows choppers are coming because all he can hear is "I don't want to die" over and over. Some people are so open about who they are and want they want that he can hear just about everything like if they want coffee or if their nose itches. Colonel Blake was like that. Most of the people back in Iowa were like that but they learned to be real quiet around him. He don't know if it was because it's a small town and rumors spread fast about strange boys who knew what you were gonna ask before you asked or if folks could tell that he was hearing what they were putting out there. He tries to not listen but it's not like closing your eyes when you don't wanna see something or plugging your nose when you don't wanna smell something. He don't mean to eavesdrop on people. It's not like he wants to know everything about everyone's business. Somethings he could do without knowing. But that ain't how it works.

\--

They're in bed and she's got an arm wrapped him like if she don't he's gonna float away to Korea and never come back. She knows what can happen. She's seen her brothers come back from Europe different. One's a cripple. One's crazy. One's a drunk. One she didn't even see come back at all. Maybe he was the lucky one. She thinks of what she can do to save him.

"John?"

"Hmmm?"

"I don't mind if you fool around on me while you're in Korea."

"I'm not gonna fool around on you. I promise."

"Yes, you will. In fact, I demand it. I want to have as many women as you can in Korea."

"You're crazy."

"And that's why you married me. But I'm serious. I don't think you understand what it's gonna be like over there."

"I'm a surgeon. I'm not gonna be at the front lines throwing grenades."

"If you think you're gonna be in some sterile, white hospital working eight hour day's you're kidding yourself. You're gonna be a goddamn tent in the middle of some village that you can't pronounce the fucking name of."

"Language. You're a lady, remember?"

"If you wanted to marry a lady, South Boston was the wrong place to start lookin' for a wife. Listen to me, John. I want you to come back from this in one piece and I don't care if you have to make it with every nurse in the U.S. Army just as long as you come home sane. And for Christ's sake, use a rubber because if you bring home a case of the clap I will amputate the affected area."

"You're not joking are you?"

"There are two things I don't joke about the Celtics and this family."

_He wonders if years from now she's gonna look back and regret allowing him to do this. He doesn't she's ever gonna know how much she was right about or how goddamn lucky he is to have a wife like her. He doesn't know if she'd angry or disgusted if he told her it was she he was thinking about every time he did it._

A lot of the people here have the wrong impression about him. Hawk thinks he's just like him that he's just a young guy looking to get drunk and laid except he has this excess baggage back home. He knows that Hawk thinks he's better than him because he'd never cheat on his wife. It's just the looks he gives him sometimes. It's the same look he gives Frank or Hot Lips. That kind of look that comes from living in a nice house and having Daddy pay for medical school. It's not that he doesn't like Hawkeye. No. He's his best friend over here but sometimes he feels like he's babysitting a toddler except that toddler might drink himself to death if you leave him to his own devices. And that can be nice because he misses his girls even though it doesn't look like he does. This is the one place where and he and Frank see eye to eye. They don't talk about their kids because if they talk about them then they have to think about them and then they miss them more than before.

\--

His dad glares at him. He knows he's upset and that he's disappointed in him.

"Maybe this is a good thing," his dad says. "It might give you some time to grow up."

He _is_ grown up but he can't say that because five minutes ago he was talking about how he's only twenty-seven years old and this is the first time he's ever been able to relax because of college and medical school. He's just a young guy figuring himself out. He would have been doing this in college but he was too busy working his ass off trying to get into medical school. Not just any medical school. It had to be dear old dad's alma mater. Nothing but the best. Finest kind.

So he drinks a little now and then. It's not a problem. He doesn't get drunk while on call but if he needs a drink in between surgeries to stop his hands from shaking who can deny him that? He's never hurt anybody. Some dumb fuck janitor just found a few bottles in his locker. The hospital's been looking for a reason to get rid of him ever since he started there. When he comes back from the war, no hospital will say no to hiring him. He'll be a goddamn war hero.

_Sometimes he's afraid he's gonna die out here without experiencing any of the real world sober but every time he tries to quit—and he does try to quit—his hands start shaking and he feels sick. He keeps drinking. Somebody's been watering down his gin. He doesn't if it's Trapper because he wants more of it for himself or it's Frank just to be a pain in the ass or if it's Radar trying to get him to drink less. He just drinks twice as much now._

\--

The day after he comes back from their honeymoon he puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Turns out it was one of her father's antiques. He wonders if he can die from accidentally ingesting fifty year old gun powder.

After their first daughter is born he tries pills. The first bottle he can find. They were vitamins. He goes to the hospital for overdosing on iron. He's out in three days.

The next time it's a noose in the garage. The beam couldn't hold his weight and collapses. He has a broken collar bone and he has to pay for a new garage.

He cuts his wrist with an old razor. It breaks halfway down his arm. He stops bleeding two minutes later and has to get a tetanus shot.

He parks his new car in his new garage and rolls down the door and starts the engine. He sits there for an hour. Apparently his wife told the contractors to put a vent in the new garage.

He's almost run out of ways to kill himself when he hears an ad on the radio saying that the police action in Korea needs doctors. He enlists and is suddenly a Major in the U.S. Army.

_It's the same here as it was at home. He's too scared to die but he can't hold it together for much longer. He had Margaret like he had his wife and he had his receptionist. It buys him some time. He thought she was going to fix him. She tried to build him up into something he was never made to be._

If there was less pressure maybe he could handle it. If the wounded came in tens instead of hundreds... If he were a better doctor...

He never wanted to be a doctor. He can't stand the pressure. Not even at home in his small practice. He could mess up and everyone would know that Frank Burns is a fraud, a fake, a sissy, a fairy...

He just wants to go home and raise his daughters. He wishes his wife could be the one that works and he was the one who cooked and cleaned and watched the girls.

That's a different kind of pressure. He's afraid he's going to break them. That he's going to make one mistake and they'll be dead. The first time he held Janet his heart stopped beating and he realized that he was in no way fit to do this that he was going to be the death of her and she would be better off if he just died.

It always comes down to that.

\--

That's why he always tries to be nice to everybody 'cause you never know what makes folks act the way they act. Except he knows.


End file.
